I have been asking my parents for this picture for years and they finally found it. My grandfather built what he called a snow machine in the late 60's. He use to race it across the frozen lakes in upstate NY. Apparently it was so fast that it was dismantled not to long after it was built.

Looks like it could've been fun.

He needed some of those rudder/vanes like the airboats have for thrust vectoring.

Crazy! But probably fun.

Awesome

Evening Magazine TV show (King 5 Seattle) had a segment abut a guy who had one of these. Unfortunately, they portrayed the guy as a bit of an idiot ("yuk yuk, it's got no brakes! yuk yuk") instead of playing it straight and maybe describing his snow machine. Do you know what engine your grandpa had on his?

hotrod180 wrote:Evening Magazine TV show (King 5 Seattle) had a segment abut a guy who had one of these. Unfortunately, they portrayed the guy as a bit of an idiot ("yuk yuk, it's got no brakes! yuk yuk") instead of playing it straight and maybe describing his snow machine. Do you know what engine your grandpa had on his?

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An old farmer friend of mine said they used to have lots of them on the prairies. They called them ski planes back then. He said most of the parts required were gathered from airplanes that crashed on the farms. He said there was never any shortage of parts. He did say they were scary to drive and they ruined more than on fence.

Joe drove something similar on Ice Pilots, but I can't find a video to link...

I poked around at one of those parked in a lot between Victor and Driggs, ID a couple years ago. This thing hadn't moved for a while you could tell but it was pretty cool. Had a massive 8 cylinder Lycoming on it. 0-720, or something? How much power does one of those have? Looked scary.

I took some pictures of it, maybe I can dig them up.

My family had two ski planes when we lived in the Centennial Valley in SW Montana. The smaller one had a Kinner radial 5 cylinder engine, the larger, four seater, had a Wright Whirlwind. The valley had a number of these things. Many years later, I visited with a couple guys who were rebuilding antique airplanes and told them about these old ski planes. They drove up to the Centennial, and apparently bought several of the engines off these things to restore and install on aircraft.

And, no, we didn't pre-heat them.....just dumped hot oil in them, and hand propped them to start. No electrics. Before the snow got deep, we'd stay on the roads (not plowed), but by mid winter, you could go over fences most winters.

MTV

That looks like it was built from Popular Mechanics or Mechanics Illustrated plans. Somewhere I have an issue from the late 40's early 50's that has a full set of plans included in that months publication. -The good old days